davelepka

It might be able to, and if you want to strap a data-logger to a jumper, and just crunch numbers you might come up with something. The big difference between planes and parachutes is the instrumentation, and your ability to equip the airframe with the sensors to gather that type of air-data. If you were to fore-go all of that, and simply look at the raw data based on senros you could mount inside of a data-logger, with no exteral inputs, it would be far less useful. To stay on the aircraft comparison, the pilot is able to reference the instruments in real time. They can physically (and they do) scan the panel to get info that pretains to 'right now'. If you recorded all that info, and simply showed them the graphs after-the-fact, again, you lose much of the benefit. Connecting an instrumented read-out to an exact previous time that occured in the middle of a high-speed, high stress scenario is unlikely. Back to the idea of a 'warning system', I thought of good comparison. Think about driving a race car on a track. In the corners, the goal is to drive up to the corner as fast as possible, and then stand on the brakes as hard as possible, then go through the corner on the verge of spinning out. The end result is to get through as fast as possible. Now try to imagine creating a device that would let the driver know they were going to over-shoot the corner or spin-out mid corner without any connection to the car itslef. We all know that traction control and anti-lock brakes exist, do some of the job I outlined above, but that type of physical conntection to the canopy would not be possible in a swoop alarm. So if you limit yourself to the 'corner alarm' only knowing the entry speed and track position, how would you create such a device that would know the driver was coming in too fast or about to corner too hard before it would happen? The driver would need that advanced notice to be able to adjust their driving to prevent the mishap, so how would you let them know before it happend, that they're about to 'overcook' the corner? I didn't take it as a challege to my skills. The problem is that we have a good process for learning, it's just that nobody uses it. Advance slowly, plan on not swooping until you have 300/400/500 jumps, plan on keeping your WL under 2.0 and off an X-brace until you have 500+ swoops, and seek professional training. This isn't toggle whipping down the beer line anymore, but people think it is. If you want to 'go big', and recognize swooping as a 'real sport', you have to treat it that way. Nobody does 20 way CRW diamonds without a bunch of CRW experience and a professional coach/organizer leading the effort. Nobody gets on a 50-way head-down jump without 1000 freefly jumps, and a ton of coaching/advice along the way. Nobody gets on a 200-way belly jump without years of experience and/or going to a big way camp. But a shit-ton of people think they can just 'figure out' swooping on their own, and that a 270 isn't a big deal. If you want to fly a conservative canopy at a reasonable WL, and then do a double fronts approach, or carve through a 45 or 90 to final, have at it. That's not 'swooping' and that doesn't match the magnitude of the activites I mentioend above. I learned CRW while jogging to catch a running aircraft, but it was a 2 or 3 way jump (with an experienced CRW dog), and we just built a couple of stacks, and that was cool, but it's not advanced top-level CRW. If I wanted to do that, I'd find a training camp and a coach and get to work. So when a jumper has their sights set on big-time swooping, they sould seek training and the like, but they don't. The system exists, now figure out a way to get the new guys to recognize and follow it. I'm glad you brought up the 'spider sense' because it gives me a chance to reference what might be my all time favorite quote. Have a look-see at this and pay close attention from 1:15 to 1:32 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZBcapxGHjE It's not super human, and there's no radio-active spiders invovled, it's just an a accumulation of time and expereince that let you recognize things that others can't or don't see. Which is why, again, I stress that if people would take their time, and develop that sense slowly and gradually, that it will be there when they need it. The idea that something isn't right will be quite clear, and occur to them early enough to allow for an abort of the manuver, without even getting close to a close call.

If you had bothered to read the entire post, you would have seen this- I'm not suggested that swooping is the hardest skill to develop, just that swooping requires the most experience before getting started, and probably takes the longest to develop. You can do any of the things you mentioned with 200 jumps (or less) if you want to follow the USPA regs. That same number of jumps does not make you ready for swooping. It takes the longest to develop for the same reason that 200 jumps isn't enough to prepare, you only get one shot at it per-jump. Short of accuracy, every other discipline allows you multiple 'tries' at whatever it is you want to do per jump, with CRW being the stand-out, as a CRW jump can last upwards of 10 min. If you figure an average swoop, from turn initiation to touch-down might last 8 to 10 seconds, you're looking at 60 to 70 jumps to get 10 min of swooping under your belt. I'm not catagorizing or ranking disciplines, just stating the facts. It takes a lifetime to 'master' just about anything, but it takes a couple years and a few hundred jumps just to get started swooping (if you want to do it 'safely'). Even then, once you get started, you have a long road of smaller-degree turns and short swoops ahead of your before you get to the 'good stuff'.

Again, your (I guess the two of) basic misunderstanding of the 'perameters' of a swoop are getting the way here. There is no 'model' swoop that you can calibrate such a device to. Each swoop is different to the degree that you would lose the percision needed to provide any type of useful alarm during a swoop. I've already covered the concept that you can make the same turn from a good range of altitudes. That range can be 300+ft on highly loaded x-braced canopies, but even on less aggresive canopies and smaller degree of turns, there's still range +/- 100ft where you can make the turn, and still have a good (and safe) swoop. Let's cast that aside, and sugggest that a jumper is good enough to be so consistant that the above isn't a factor. now you run in to the atmospheric conditions, and how they change during the day. Temps and humidty will rise, and so will density altitude as th day wears on. While this isn't something a jumper needs to actively worry about and check before each jump, it can throw off your 'critical' altitude (the one where if you are still diving at X rate you cannot recover) to the point where the swoop warning device becomes uselss. Keep in mind that for any such device to be useful, it has to be accurate and relaible. If it's too conservative and 'cries wolf' too soon and too often, people will either stop using it or start ignoring it. Let's say it goes off 20ft too high, and the jumper reacts by applying full toggle to arrest the dive. The canopy then planes out 20 ft above the ground, and the jumper has just aborted a swoop they didn't need to, and bled off a good deal of airspeed 20ft up, leaving themselves to mush through the last 20ft to the ground. How often will a jumper put up with that before the device is shelved? The problem is not in the 'closed mind' of some more experienced swoopers, the problem is in the uninformed mind of non-swoopers. HP canopy flight is extremely fluid in the changes that occur from jump to jump, from day to day, and from second to second. Despite what some might have you believe, it's highly impercise venture. The end result, the swoop itself is fairly percise in that you fly above the ground to a fairly close tolerance, but the approach and dive are very fluid, and inlolve a constant asses/adjust/reasses cycle during the manuver. If you were to instrument a top swooper and measure things like toggle/riser position, time in turn, speed/descent rate, and g-loading at the bottom of the turn, you would see that there are variations to the degree that you can't draw a hard line and say 'This' is the point of no-return for every swoop. It's just not possible. The simple fact of the matter is that there aren't instruments percise enough and software predictive enough to handle the speeds and precision required for swooping, short of the human eye and brain. That's why I keep coming back the core concpet that swooping is a very long road to travel if you want to 'go big'. HP canopy flight, as we know it today, represents the highest end of the sport in terms of required training and experience to get there. You can fly camera, a wingsuit, or become a TI or AFF instructor with 500 jumps, but that's a drop in the bucket if your goal is to become a 'swooper'. 500 jumps is the 'warm up' you need to get started with swooping, but again, most people don't see it that way.

Should be faster. It will probably dive a little longer and pack up smaller too. Might even be lighter than the 129. All sillyness aside, if you did put 300 on a 129 and feel good about your progress and abilites with the 129, the 119 shouldn't be a big deal. It's not much of a downsize if you really think about it.

I've got to tell you, it's not the air. The changes in measureable air properties are not enough from one day to the next to make the degree of difference you would need to just end up flying your canopy into the ground. Virtually every 'swoop' landing involves a range of altitudes you could turn at, and still be able to pull out of the dive before impact. Even the exact same turn can be made from a range of alitudes, higher if you let the canopy recover on it's own, lower if you 'manually' recover it with pilot input. All of these ranges are far greater than atmospheric conditions can effect the canopy. For example, I can fly the same set-up and make the same turn when the air temp is 90 and when it's 50. I may need to 'help' the canopy out of the dive on the hot day, and can just let it fly on the colder day, but the net effect of the temp is not enough to overcome the abilities of the canopy. My example isn't even going to the extreme of a 'bail out' manuver, where you apply as much input as the canopy can take without stalling (aka stabbing out). The 'help' I'm talking about giving the canopy on a hot day is a bump to the rears, or a 'brush' of the toggles. Nothing that would be seen as 'risky' or a 'close call' to an observer. Granted, significant differences in LZ elevation can play a more significant role, and if you add density altitude to that, it's even worse, but I can't recall many accidents that matched the model of a jumper who went up to a high DZ and pounded right in. There are some impacts and close calls, but no 'significant' incidents I can recall. Even so, you don't need a complicated gizmo to understand and indentify density altitude. A few minutes of internet study can explain the concept, and a phone call to the AWOS at the nearest airport will generally just tell you the density altitude when it's a factor. Of course, there's always the concepts of object turbulence and the wake they produce, but again, that's not gizmo related, it's about taking the time to learn the concept, then making a careful and informed choice before each jump as to where you intend to land, and that following that plan. You have to get very deep into a swoop before it's non-recoverable, and you are going to hit no matter what you do. The line between 'recoverable' and 'non-recoverable' is about 5 or 10 ft wide, and you at swoop speeds you'll go through it in a nano-second. If you're not on the brakes or leveling out before you pass through that line, you're just fucked. No beeper can help you with that, it would literally need to predict your actions 40 or 50 ft further up, and 'know' that you're not going to react in time. Your choice is simple, you can slowly work your way up to flying at the ground at a high speeds little by little. If you make it so your next approach is never more than 1% or 2% faster than any of your last 20 landings, you'll probably be OK. The net change from what you're 'used to' and what you're 'about to do' is suttle enough that you're still in familiar territory. It's when you start to stray from that, and you put yourself in a new-to-you position of flying at the ground much faster, you risk smoking right across the line where your dive becomes 'non-recoverable', and we know what happens next. In terms of the incident that spurred this thread, sometimes accidents do happen. If you jump, you'll have a bad landing sooner or later, and if you swoop, that bad landing is going to be a bad swoop.

The guy in the video was a dumbfuck. If you're a dumbfuck, or want to act like a dumbfuck, no amount of planning or common sense can help you. It seems obvious, but the real solution is not to get into these situations. Have yourself established under an open canopy above 1000ft on every jump and you'll be golden. If that means you need to pull by 3000ft to make sure then happens, then pull by 3000ft on EVERY jump. If you try to make sense of a situation where your actions that got you there don't make sense (like breakling off low, pulling low, or reacting to a mal low), it's not going to happen. Trying to plan for those situations is a fools errand for two reasons - The first is that you're in the situation as the result of making an error (or series of errors) so the exact circumstances are unknown, and therefore an exact course of action cannot be known. The second is that you're talking about being dirty low and in trouble, and there's no time to think through the exact circumstances of your scenario. You need to act immediately and hope for the best. Now it may sound like the second reason is why you should think things through ahead of time, but then revert to the first reason, and you can see that unless you know the exact curcumstances of a situation, you cannot 'commit' to a course of action. The last thing you want to do is imprint a solution on your brain, only to be down and dirty and have that be the worst thing you could do. You might follow that course of action without even thinking, and then you're really fucked. The truth is that all the EPs have are 'best case scenarios' for when things go wrong. You can never say for sure up front if your EPs or hard decks are right or wrong, but if you back all of them up with altitude to spare, you stack the deck in your favor. If you do fuck yourself over and get down and dirty with a mal, do something, do it fast, keep doing it until you hit, and get tough because you're going to need it.

All of the 'what if's' are easily answered by simply establishing your hard deck altitudes and sticking to them like glue. Your main - yes, have a hard deck for your main, and stick to it. It you're jumping with others, that means 'reverse engineering' your pull and break-off sequence, and then using that to establish your group freefall hard-deck. So if you want to pull by 2500ft, and you need 1000ft to track and pull, that means you leave the skydive by 3500ft, no exceptions. The cutaway - again, figure out how low you would want to pull your reserve, and back that into a cutaway hard deck. If you want a reserve over your head by 1000ft, and you think it will take 500ft to pull both handles and allow for a little reserve PC delay (spring loaded PCs will do that, plan for it, and if it doesn't you just end up open higher) and than you have 1500ft as your cutaway 'hard deck'. If you find yourself below the cutaway 'hard deck' and still under a malfucntioning main, skip the cutaway and pull the reserve. It's simple. Plan this out ahead of time, and review/visualize these things in the plane before exit. People touch their handles all the time in the plane, some people even mimick the full procedure, but take it one step further and also review your key altitudes at that time. The more times you review it, the more you think about it, the more it becomes 'second nature' and not something you have to 'think about' when the shit really hits the fan. The best advice I can give anyone is to stay 'ahead' of the skydive. If you want to break off by 3500ft, don't set a beeper and ignore your altitude until it beeps, check your alti in between each point after the jump feels about 'halfway' over. This way you know that if you're closing in on a pont and you see 4k on the clock, as soon as you take your grip you might as well turn and burn. It's close to break off, you won't have time for another point, so exit early. There's no merit to just riding that last point down another 500ft, and there may be signoficant merit to having extra altitude if things go 'off plan' during the deployment sequence. Always know what's coming, and what you want to be doing 5 seconds from right now. Plan ahead for every move you make, and act on that, as opposed to waiting for things to happen to you, and simply reacting to whatever that might be. Edit - the above altitudes are for example only, and not suggestions of actual hard deck altitudes.

That puts your exit weight at 265/270, and your WL closer to 1.6 than 1.5. Any way you want to look at it, it's too high, and you're taking more of a chance pushing the WL like that. There's a pretty big different between 1.3 and 1.6. Right around 1.4/1.5, most non-xbraced canopies really 'wake up' and start to shed any 'conservative' characteristics. For you to want to make the switch from 1.3 to 1.6 with your jump numbers is extra dumb. Words to live by - If your gonna be dumb, you better be tough. You might be the biggest guy on just about every block you've ever been on, but terra firma is always going to be bigger and tougher. All that size just turns into an awful lot of energy sailing toward the planet, make sure you can't get it slowed down before you hit.

That's true, but like a contract, it's only relevant when there's a problem. In the case of DZs, I think that both parties prefer to operate as contractors/contractes, so if push comes to shove, they'll catagorize their relationship however they need to make the gov boys happy. You could also make the argument that the work is performed to the standards of the USPA and the manufacturer, not neccesarily the DZ. Just like the plumber and electritian perform their work to the local building codes, with the contractee just being concerned that the lights will turn on and the toilets will flush. It's all academic, of course, because DZs are hubs of under-the-table payments and illegal immigrant labor anyway.

The legal standing of a TI has nothing to do with how they're paid. You can pay an employee 'piece-work', and still have them legally considered an employee. You would take care of their taxes and pay unemployment/SS to the gov on their behalf. The majority of the garment industry is structured that way, with workers being paid for the number of goods they sew. That aside, most TIs are paid as independent contractors because most DZs don't want the hassles/overhead of actual employees, and most TIs don't want taxes taken out before they get their money. Some pay their taxes, some pay some of their taxes, and some don't pay any taxes at all. It's not legal to short (or ignore) the IRS, but it's impossible to do as an 'employee' with your employer reporting and paying taxes on your behalf.

The canopy will eventaully fly exactly the same with one toggle at half brakes regardless of how fast you pulled that toggle down. Yes, there will be differences in how the canopy reaches that flight mode, but it will end up being the same sooner or later. Just like full flight on your canopy, if you reach it by unstowing the brakes and slowly raising the toggles all the way up, it will be the same full flight as if you unstowed the brakes, pulled the toggles down to your hips and let go of them so they shoot up to the guide ring. Once the canopy settles down, it's full flight as usual. The idea is that canopy is in 'steady state' flight, with no acceleration in any direction. If you were to unstow only one brake, inducing a turn, the canopy would again settle into 'steady state' flight, with no acceleration in any direciton. Yes, you would be turning and diving, but the turn and dive would be consistant because the input to the canopy is consistant. If the input doesn't change, the flight mode doesn't change.

That's great news. As far as the criminal charges go, that's out of your hands, but if the DA can make their case, your civil case is a no-brainer. The DA would have proved that he was guilty, the civil case is just there to figure out how much the damages were to your property. Remember that even if the DA can't make the case, it doesn't mean you don't still have a civil case. It's much harder for the DA to convict the guy of a crime than it is for you to win a civil case against him. The truth is, the fact that DA would even persue criminal charges looks VERY bad for the 'lumberjack' when it comes to a civil case. Your odds look better and better that a good lawyer will be able to avoid the civil case all together, and just get the guy to settle out of court. his lawyer doesn't want to go in there and get his ass handed to him, so there's a chance he'll advise his guy to settle, and you avoid the hassle. Not a bad way to start the new year.

Your mistake is in the basic understanding of a 'competitive' swoop under a modern wing. For example, I can manage a 450 degree turn from as low as 550 or 600ft. I can also make it work from as high as 950 or 1000ft. Others could probably eat up even more altitude, I've just never tried. The point is that you don't just 'bail' on the turn, you might speed it up, you might whip it around and pop the rear risers to begin the turn recovery sooner, but you don't find out mid-turn that you just need to stop all together. Once you've flown a good set-up and cleared traffic, any adjustments made to the swoop due to atmospheric conditions are made 'on the fly' Disclaimer - of course there are times you need to bail all together, but those would be due to things like unseen traffic or gear malfunctions. Sometimes you need to stop the swoop, but it's not due to a spike in the density altitude in the last hour or so. Back to the topic at hand, the reason you can't have a swoop warning is that by the time any such device would go off, and the pilot would acknowledge and react, it would be too late. The margins are thin in swooping, and if you set the device to only go off when there is iminent danger, the warning will come too late. Every single one of the 'close calls' I've had in the last 1000 jumps was due to me getting distracted during the swoop and looking away. When I looked back, I was much lower and much further along than I expected, it all happens that fast. This is the reason that people need to slow down, and realize that becoming a 'hot-shot' swooper is a 1000 jump project. Not 1000 jumps total, but 1000 swoops leading up to being a hot shot. 1000 less-than-impressive swoops, where the pilot demonstrates the maturity and self-control to remain well within their abilites, and take it one slow step at a time. I was lucky. When I learned there were no cross-braced canopies, and nobody ever thought of doing more than a 180. I remember when I thought I was going to set the world on fire because I would go 20 or 30 degrees left, just before cranking my 180 to the right (then it was a 200 or 210) degreee turn. All of this was on a square-as-square-can-be Sabre 1. By the time the cross-braced canopies came out, and then people started to really 'work' them, I had 3000+ jumps with probably 2500 of them invloving some sort of front riser manuver for landing. These days, the top end of the sport has rocketed up so far, that people gloss over the basics and the 'baby steps' you need to take to eventaully get there. Everyone is so focused on being one of the 'big dogs', and when they see how far they have to go, it becomes a 'rush, rush, rush' to get there. Here's a fact - anything much more than a 90 or maybe a 180, and any WL much over 1.5 or 1.6 on any canopy should be reserved for expert canopy pilots. You should be better than 'good' at flying a parachute before you even think about any of the above. Sadly, most folks don't see it that way.

Your DZ does whatever you want it to. 99% of activites at the DZ beyond doing AFF/tandem/video are organized by regular jumpers who want to do whatever it is their organizing. If you want a canopy contol course, contact some people who run them and get the details. When are they available, who can participate, and what's the min $ to get them to the DZ. Clear it with the DZO, and put up a sign-up sheet with the info you collected. If you get enough people, collect deposits and book the coach for the weekend. If you want scrambles, talk to the DZO and ask if there's a more experienced jumper or load organizer who can help you, and put up a sign-up sheet. Based on the response, pick a date and format and have at it. Beyond that, if learning is your goal, the bets way to learn is to get 'organized'. You don't need a dedicated load organizer to jump with you, but if you can find an experienced jumper to 'organize' jumps for you and a couple buddies, that's a good bet. Have them go over exits, door positions, the points for the jump, and the break off altitude and procedures. Make the dive, and then all involved need to sit down after the jump and 'debrief' yourselves. Talk about what happened, what was supposed to happen, and what you could do to be better on the next jump. Then, here's the kicker, pack up and make the same jump with the same jumpers again. Repeat the debrief after the jump, and do that same thing for an entire day. The difference between jump 1 and jump 5 will be huge. One of the batrriers to learning is that some of the new guys take on too much at once. If you change everythying on every jump you do (the type of jump, other jumpers, the dive flow, etc) each jump starts off with you learning to adapt to the all the new factors, and then you can focus on practicing skills. If you 'level the playing field' and build some consistant factors into your jumps, you can focus on the core skills more eaily and make more progress. That's not to say you should never jump with new people or do new things, just that a dedicated 'training day' can produce some real results. Maybe 'train' all dat Sat, and then do a 'fun jump' on the sunset load, and then just goof off all day Sun.

One additional thought, canopies aren't traditional 'weight-shift' craft, but they are close. Maybe the term 'weight-swing' is a better way to describe the control method of a canopy? The primary difference being on a weight-shift craft you can apply and hold input, while on a canopy (weight-swing) your degree of input is limited to the pilot's swing under the wiing. While you can hold an input on a canopy for as long as you like, the pilot's tendency to swing back under the wing will cancel out of most of it when that swing is completed.

Technuically, you could look at any riser/toggle input as a type of weight-shift device, as applying one will change the drag profile of the wing, and allow the pilots weight to shift underneath and enact further change. At the end of the day, however, it is not a 'true' weight-shift craft, as there's no way to sustain that input for very long. In a true weight-shift craft (like a hang glider), the control bar is a solid point of attachment that allows you direct control over your position under the wing, as opposed to a canopy where all you can do is indirectly influence the wing to allow your weight to shift. Are you flying with no input before you change your position in the harness? It's been said many times that it might 'feel' like a change in fore/aft postion has enacted change, but what it really does is change the angle/position from which you apply toggle/riser input, and you end up alter that input inadvertanly during the change in position. What you would really need to test this is either some way to measure it during full flight, where the shift in position is the sole input being given to the canopy, or some sort of riser or control lock, which you could 'set', and in turn make sure that your position shift is the only chnage to the canopy. I'm sure both of those are true as well, which is why I suggested that there might be a way to fly the entire run leaning back instead of forward. You could realize the same drag reduction provided you could assume the same angle of lean, and you would avoid the big transition move at the end of the swoop. It's been said many times that the less you move in the harness the better, so why wouldn't that apply to the end of a distance run? There are obvious problems in reality with the idea, such as the main/reserve container being in your way preventing you from leaning all the back, it's just more of a 'theoretical' or 'what if' sort of idea.

Well, you failed, and that was rude. There's nothing 'natural' about a spinning prop, especially at night. Implying that she was 'selected' to walk into it based on the theory of evolution is just dumb. When we reference Darwin in explaining jump accidents, most of the time the victim had been warned or had previous knowledge/training with regards to what eventually 'got' them. In those cases, when someone isn't smart enough to heed the advice/warnings/training provided to them, in that case a snarky 'Darwin' remark isn't entirely inapropriate. In this case, the young lady was inexperienced around aircraft and presumably had no training as to how to approach a running aircraft. You could say it common sense, but these accidents suggest otherwise. Even in bright daylight, a spinning prop is all but invisible, and at night is that much worse. The general public is not accustomed to being around running machinery with exposed moving parts. Most people are used to cars, which make noise but have all the moving parts safely inside of the body structure. You can safely walk all around a running car, and that's the association most people will make.

Are you suggesting they are interchangeable, and that he as an engineer should realize this? You realize that a toggle is just a 'loop on a string' after you unstow the brakes. Before that, it's a device that works with your risers to hold the brake setting securely through the deployment. Toggles are not interchangeable as the toggle keepers on risers from different manufacturers are not all the same. I cannot use my VSE toggles on a set of UPT risers, for example.

It's pretty simple. A stall occurs at a given AOA, as already stated. What happens to the canopy after that is a function of shape. A stalled canopy with the toggles pulled all the way down is one shape, and a stalled canopy with the rear risers pulled down is another shape. Neither of them are 'flying', they're both just trailing in the wind above you. Go jump off a building holding a bedsheet. Hold it by one corner on the first jump, two corners on the second jump, and three corners on the thrid jump. Each time it will assume a different shape, none of them are airfloils or are 'flying', but they're all different. Same basic idea. Don't really jump off a building.

Sure, that should be simple and afforable too. What would be your objection to a team of canopy experts developing a syllabus, and simply distributing it to DZs for them to hold their own canopy control courses, taught by their choice of jumper? It's simple, cheap, and gets the ball rolling fairly quickly. Again, DZs want to succeed at things, and be good at stuff, and this would be no different. If you give them the syllabus, and tell them to pick their best candidate to teach it, they'll do that. Some DZs will even go above and betyond, and do more, but the min that the USPA provides will get done. Have the person giving the course sign the card, and it's done. What's the objection to having the air skills demonstrated on the honor system and skipping the signature all together? As of right now, the jumper tells the S&TA or instructor that they did the work, and the S&TA signs off that they were told that the jumpers did the work. In the end, it's no different than the jumper smply signing to the USPA that they did the work, with the exception that now they don't have to hunt down the S&TA. Again, the harder you make this, the longer it will take to realize. It's about jumpers teaching jumpers, no students are invovled. Everyone in the process had (at min) 50 jumps (as per the B license requirement). Just like Scott Miller or Brian Germain doesn't need a rating to teach a canopy control course because they're teaching licensed jumpers, this is the same. I think the USPA and the BOD are a little to 'taken' with themselves. Everything they do is mired in red tape, paperwork, hoops to jump through, and fees. None of this needs to be that complicated, come up with what people need to know, print it up, and have DZs conduct the courses for the benfit of their local jumpers. Yes, make it a license requirement to ensure that everyone does it, but then make it easy so every DZ can provide the training without too much trouble. Let the DZ pick the best person for the job, regardless of ratings, fees or otherwise.

Good. Get in there and get dirty. Go too far and figure out what too far feels like, then don't do that anymore. I'm not sure if you confirmed this or not, but you should be flying wings for this type of thing. You're going to need to mentally think through popping your wings and going to slow flight as soon as you start to lose lift. You want to slow your descent into the group, give yourself time to fly out of the burble before you make actual contact. Most of the time that means backing out of it, but sometimes moving forward is a shorter trip to clean air. If it's a stable formation and you creep too close, backing up is generally the trick, but it's the formation swongs upder you during a transition to another point, scooting forward might get you back in the wind quicker. The important thing here is to talk to the jumpers before you jump with them. Tell them what you are doing and make sure they are OK with it. If they want to trade maybe being taken out by a camera guy for getting some free video, then great. If they're not cool with that, jump with someone else. The last thing you need is to be worried about what Steve will do if you take out the formation, or how mad Bill will be. If they know going in, you free yourself up to learn what you need to learn without restriction. Disclamier - you don't want to run into anyone, anytime. When flying camera, a big part of the wings is having the recovery to fly out of the burble before you hit anyone and you need to do it to know how to do it. You 'might' hit someone in the process, but you should try your hardest not to. Flying out of the burble without taking out the formation is a skill, and this is how you learn. Finally - whatever happens, never stop trying to fly out of the burble or slow your descent rate. If you give up halfway down and bring your hands in to protect yourself, you're going to hit that much harder. You need to keep trying all the way down to planting your face in someones rig. If you're slowing down and sliding towards clean air the whole time, you'll be that much slower and that much closer to clean air when you get there. I have, in the past, flown in between two jumpers with 1" to spare on either side after getting caught up in a burble. One ounce less of 'try' on my part would have put me on top of them, but I slid right by with no impact at all. Once below them, I was in clean air and all the wing I had out popped me right back up into my slot above the formation (which was good because this was at Nationals with the team that went on to win gold in 10-way speedstar).

Perfect examples of what I'm talking about. The subject at hand is licensed jumpers teaching other licensed jumpers, there's no need for the USPA to goof it up with all of their 'hoops' that just makes it hard to achieve the real goal, passing along the info. What the USPA should be doing is the hard part. Taking all of what we (as a community) know about canopy flight, chopping it up into seperate levels, and writing a syllabus and dive flows to effectively get the info out to the jumpers. From that point on, they should step back and let the comminuty handle it from there. Show me the DZ where the DZO, S&TA, and every staff member is going to allow an unqualifed jumper to teach the classes? It's not going to happen. Everyone out there can already picture the short list of jumpers they could see filling the role at their DZ. Knock off any of those people who just don't want to do the job, and you have an easy job of selecting a person to teach the classes. Then, get this, have the same person sign on the proficiency card that the class was completed. They are guaranteed to be there and available to sign, everyone is in the same room at the same time, just get it done. As far as the jumps go, you leave that to the jumpers honor. Unless an instructor follows them out and witnesses the drills being performed, it's on their honor anyway. Have them sign their own card, comfirming that they did indeed follow the dive flows as indicated. If they want to be a schmucko about it and lie, so be it. There's nothing to stop them from lying to an S&TA about having done the work, so take the S&Ta out of the picture. The harder they make this, the longer it will be before it gets done. The sooner these programs can be put in place, the sooner the info gets out the people, and the sooner it looks like the USPA (and the community in general) gives two shits about any of this. All of the talking, and thinking, and posturing do nothing to impress upon new jumpers as to the importance of taking canopy flight seriously. Until continuing education becomes something that everyone is doing everywhere, it will remain one of those things that some people do in some places, and that doesn't make the impression that it's important or neccesary.

You never answered the question about how 'new' you really are. Unless you are a licensed jumper, you should avoid buying gear. You will not be able to use your own gear for your student training jumps, and unless you have the guidance and inspections from an FAA rigger there's a chance you may never be able to jump the gear you buy. During your student training, the DZ will provide you with gear and you'll have a chance to jump a couple different student rigs/canopies. You'll also end up spending time at the DZ, and hanging out with other jumpers and you can look at/ask about their equipment. By the time you have a license, your understanding of gear, what's available and how it all goes together will be 100x better than what you can get off the internet.

Then you run into the problem of DZ with no new instructors. If you were to add the additional info today, only instructors who recieve their rating from this point forward will have the 'qualifications'. The key point to keep in mind is that were not dealing with students. First jump or AFF level students need a rated instructor, every jump they make invovles new-to-them experiences with no track record of how they will do. There can be no question as to the training or abilites of the people who work with them, thus the need for the rating and the certification courses that go along with it. Take the coaches, for example. They are permitted to work with and jump with students who have passed AFF and proven themselves to be able to 'self jumpmaster'. The training and abailites of the coach is less than an instructor because the people they are working with have proven their ability to save their own lives. When it comes to canopy training beyond the A license, everyone involved will have at least 50 jumps (or close to it), and none of them will be undertaking 'life saving' manuvers during the course of the training. With this in mind, why burden the program with the need for a rating. Who is the most qualifed canopy pilot on your DZ? They may or may not hold an instructional rating, they may or may not have the time to go get an instructional rating, and they may or may not have the desire to get an instructional rating, but if you make that a requirement, they will not be the ones giving the canopy control course. Along those lines, what if the best candidate has no ratings as of now, would they need to dedicate a whole weekend of travel to a coach course, then add-on the canopy control rating? Would they allow a stand-alone canopy control rating? Would they tie it to the coach course, and then you have jumpers with 50 jumps teaching the course? What about the advanced courses for the 'expert' rating to go along with the D license, would that be taught by the 50 jump wonder? The USPA should work out the syllabus, and let the DZ choose who will do the training. They know who the best person for the job is, and there's no reason to make any more out it. It's experienced jumpers dealing with experienced jumpers, and the USPA doesn't need to weigh it down with all of their administrative nonsense.

Don't say that. I couldn't be more behind the idea that canopy piloting education needs to be ongoing, tied directly to licensing, and tied directly to a WL/canopy type restriction, but the last thing you should do is make another rating. I can already feel the momentum dying out, and the whole process becoming expensive, cumbersome and time consuming. If you create the rating, you need a rating course, an I/E, another fee on the renewal, etc, etc, etc. This isn't about teaching students, who are essentailly non-jumpers, this is about teaching licensed jumpers and so you lose the need for a 'rated' person. It doesn't have to be that formal or complicated. What happens when a DZ doesn't have a Canopy Instructor on the field? Or then they only have one, and they are busy with tandems or AFFs? The idea is twofold - first it's to get the info, good solid correct info, out there into the jumpers heads. The other is to imprint upon the sport as a whole that canopy flight is it's own 'thing' and needs to be regarded as such. If you make it a part of the 'scene' it lends a degree of importance to what has thus far been the red-headed stepchild of skydiving training. Again, what you need is to develop a solid classroom syllabus for three or four progressivly more advanced canopy control courses. The syllabus allows it to be taught by anyone with a modicum of experience and an understanding of the aerodynamics/mechanics of a canopy. They don't need a rating, or any of the administrative hassles or costs that go along with it, they just need the approval of the DZO, S&TA and DZ staff in general. If those people feel they are qualifed to teach the established syllabus to already licensed jumpers, then that should be good enough. Neither Scott Miller, Brian Germain, or Luigi Cani have a Canopy Instructor rating, but they all teach a good canopy control course and all have the endorsement of DZOs, S&TA and DZ staffs around the world. Partner the classroom time with a proficiency card (simialr to what you have now) outlining the drills and air-skills that correspond to the classroom time, and there you go. You have the book knowledge presented in the class, the air time outlined on the card, and if it's all tied in to a WL/canopy type restriction, you'll have educated, practiced jumpers, flying canopies within their abilites at appropriate WLs. Every DZ has a 'best choice' for who coudl teach the classes, and they could be scheduled for a Fri night (or other weekday time) once or twice per season for each level of class. It provides all jumpers at every DZ access to the classes without requiring anyone (students or the instructor) to travel anywhere at any specific time. The more complicated you make it, the better chances it will fail. Keep it simple, stupid (no offence).